WATCH: US Still ‘Testing’ Same ‘Iron Curtain’ Anti-Missile System After 13 Years

The US Army is looking to protect lightly armored vehicles from missiles and lethal projectiles with an “iron curtain” that has been under development for more than a decade without being delivered to warfighters’ hands.

According to Popular Mechanics, the army is growing increasingly worried about the Russian Army’s Kornet-EM anti-tank guided missiles as well as Taliban fighters destroying vehicles with shoulder-fired rocket propelled grenades (RPGs). “Passive” protection in the form of more armor does not always work, the Army has learned.

Enter the Iron Curtain: the answer to RPG and anti-tank guided threats against the Army’s Humvees and Stryker armored personnel carriers.

“It’s amazing what an explosively-formed projectile can do to a 78-ton Abrams” battle tank, even with all of its armor, Major General John Charlton said in a December news release. Charlton is the commander of the Army’s Test and Evaluation Command.

The US’ Abrams main battle tanks rely on Israel’s “Trophy” protection system, which destroys incoming projectiles with a shotgun-like blast, but this systems won’t work for the Humvees and Strykers, the news outlet noted.

The Iron Curtain, by contrast, is an active system that detects threats approaching the vehicle and fires countermeasures directly up or down to prevent damage to troops and equipment.

The company behind the Iron Curtain, Artis, claims the system to be 100 percent effective.